Program and Participants

Welcome

Rebecca Raue, artist.
She founded Ephra to uncover the treasure found in direct encounters with contemporary art and its creators, and to make it accessible especially to children and young people. Together with her team, she has developed educational programs that use art as a possibility to playfully open up unusual conversations.

Statement

Benita von Maltzahn, Head of Culture and Society, Volkswagen Group.
She has been responsible for the Volkswagen Group’s international cultural engagement since 2011. Her work focuses on strengthening initiatives that provide cultural education and participation to as many people as possible. Therefore she collaborates with international institutions and stakeholders in the arts and culture, enabling Volkswagen to offer the general public diverse encounters with creative ideas and works.

Guests

Carsten Höller, artist, author, and writer of “Book of Games”.
His works are conceived as radical experiments that examine human behavior and interaction and specifically invite active participation. In large-scale, immersive installations—ranging from walk-in environments to spectacular slides—he creates experiential spaces that challenge perceptions and decision-making processes. Höller gained international recognition through projects such as his installation in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Gallery in London and participatory works at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In addition to his exhibition work, he also creates interdisciplinary formats, including the restaurant “Brutalisten” in Stockholm and “The Double Club.” Born in 1961 in Brussels, Höller now lives and works in Stockholm and Biriwa, Ghana.

Jenny Schlenzka, Director of Gropius Bau
She has been the director of Gropius Bau since September 2023 and is one of the leading voices in contemporary performative and transdisciplinary art formats. Lastly, she worked in New York for over 20 years, most recently as the director of Performance Space New York, where she collaborated closely with international artists and actively involved them in institutional processes. At MoMA PS1 in Queens, she developed innovative exhibition formats for performative art and launched the “Sunday Sessions,” an open, weekly live program. Prior to that, she was the first curator at the Museum of Modern Art to focus on performance and played a key role in establishing this field. At the heart of Jenny Schlenzka’s work is an artist-oriented practice that views contemporary art as a space for social discourse.

Host

Sebastian Frenzel, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Monopol Magazine.
With a keen eye for current discourses, he shapes the editorial direction of Monopol Magazine and the “Kunst & Leben” podcast. In his articles, he explores the intersections between art, society, and cultural transformation.
In his recent article “Geniale Dilettanten der Empathie,” he asked whether the art world’s growing focus on children is an escape from the bleak state of the world or a sign of a fundamental shift in perspective. He analyzes how institutions—using the Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Kunstverein Hannover as examples—no longer view children as disruptive visitors but as creative co-creators.